The Golden Bough A study of magic and religion

Page: 472

On the whole, then, the theory of the purificatory virtue of the
ceremonial fires appears more probable and more in accordance with
the evidence than the opposing theory of their connexion with the
sun.

LXIV. The Burning of Human Beings in the Fires

1. The Burning of Effigies in the Fires

WE have still to ask, What is the meaning of burning effigies in
the fire at these festivals? After the preceding investigation the
answer to the question seems obvious. As the fires are often
alleged to be kindled for the purpose of burning the witches, and
as the effigy burnt in them is sometimes called “the
Witch,” we might naturally be disposed to conclude that all
the effigies consumed in the flames on these occasions represent
witches or warlocks, and that the custom of burning them is merely
a substitute for burning the wicked men and women themselves, since
on the principle of homoeopathic or imitative magic you practically
destroy the witch herself in destroying her effigy. On the whole
this explanation of the burning of straw figures in human shape at
the festivals is perhaps the most probable.

Yet it may be that this explanation does not apply to all the
cases, and that certain of them may admit and even require another
interpretation. For the effigies so burned, as I have already
remarked, can hardly be separated from the effigies of Death which
are burned or otherwise destroyed in spring; and grounds have been
already given for regarding the so-called effigies of Death as
really representatives of the tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation.
Are the other effigies, which are burned in the spring and
midsummer bonfires, susceptible of the same explanation? It would
seem so. For just as the fragments of the so-called Death are stuck
in the fields to make the crops grow, so the charred embers of the
figure burned in the spring bonfires are sometimes laid on the
fields in the belief that they will keep vermin from the crop.
Again, the rule that the last married bride must leap over the fire
in which the straw-man is burned on Shrove Tuesday, is probably
intended to make her fruitful. But, as we have seen, the power of
blessing women with offspring is a special attribute of
tree-spirits; it is therefore a fair presumption that the burning
effigy over which the bride must leap is a representative of the
fertilising tree-spirit or spirit of vegetation. This character of
the effigy, as representative of the spirit of vegetation, is
almost unmistakable when the figure is composed of an unthreshed
sheaf of corn or is covered from head to foot with flowers. Again,
it is to be noted that, instead of a puppet, trees, either living
or felled, are sometimes burned both in the spring and midsummer
bonfires. Now, considering the frequency with which the tree-spirit
is represented in human shape, it is hardly rash to suppose that
when sometimes a tree and sometimes an effigy is burned in these
fires, the effigy and the tree are regarded as equivalent to each
other, each being a representative of the tree-spirit. This, again,
is confirmed by observing, first, that sometimes the effigy which
is to be burned is carried about simultaneously with a May-tree,
the former being carried by the boys, the latter by the girls; and,
second, that the effigy is sometimes tied to a living tree and
burned with it. In these cases, we can scarcely doubt, the
tree-spirit is represented, as we have found it represented before,
in duplicate, both by the tree and by the effigy. That the true
character of the effigy as a representative of the beneficent
spirit of vegetation should sometimes be forgotten, is natural. The
custom of burning a beneficent god is too foreign to later modes of
thought to escape misinterpretation. Naturally enough the people
who continued to burn his image came in time to identify it as the
effigy of persons, whom, on various grounds, they regarded with
aversion, such as Judas Iscariot, Luther, and a witch.